The Empire of United Star Nations cruiser of the general fleet "Christina" went on a mission in the center of the Stellafirm Nebula to set up a jump gate in the Kirk system.

The inhabitants of Kirk Prime had just overthrown their oppressive fascistic state in a bloody revolution. With the government in complete collapse the now free people of Kirk Prime struggle to set up a new one. This has destroyed much of the infrastructure world wide leaving many millions without power, clean water or food. Setting up a jump gate in the system would've enabled the EUSN to send aid in rebuilding their civilization.

The journey through the surrounding hyper-dense nebula, rife with volatile gasses and ion storms, would otherwise be far too treacherous to navigate for any trade ships.

Allas, it was not to be.

The fledgling Terrig neighbours, still carving out their own territory in space, felt that setting up a trade gate near Kirk would undermine them. They feared that making Kirk Prime the main entry point for all trade inside the Stellafirm Nebula would end up making that world powerful, and the Terrigs would very much rather be considered the ONLY power inside the nebula. However, they also understood that simply annexing Kirk Prime was out of the question. Kirk was weak after their revolution and had no fleet to speak of, but the EUSN is rather protective of anyone in need of aid, so occupying the planet would've given the much more powerful EUSN with technology centuries ahead of the Terrigs a good reason to declare war.

So instead of laying claim to the planet, the Terrigs laid claim to all the space surrounding Kirk Prime as territory under their protection. Because of this the EUSN and the Trade Union (who would be controlling the gate) would have to agree to set up the gate near the Terrig Home Planet, and all items coming through the gate would then be regulated and taxed by the Terrigs.

An armed conflict where a much larger and more advanced empire bullies a young and upstart star nation out of some empty space they laid claim to would look really bad to the rest of the galactic community. However, the EUSN could not support the kind of iron grip state that the Terrigs have nor did they want to recognize any of the space as claimed by the Terrigs. This meant that the Christina could not fulfill its intended mission and no aid could be sent to Kirk Prime without somehow resolving the situation with the Terrigs politically, and so left the nebula.

Many years ago I made a drawing of this piece of lore and posted it to DeviantArt here: www.deviantart.com/tattorack/...

I was at work and doing a lot of thinking as I delivered food. Thinking about my projects and all that. Then it suddenly hit me; That spaceship drawing I made ages ago... I literally had all the assets lying around to remake it, all I had to do was assemble them together and render! It would be easy and fast to render and look damned cool too! Yeah...

Rendering was entirely done in the real time renderer Eevee, but... it took a long ass time to actually complete. 12 hours in total, and not because Eevee was difficult to manage.

I can easily run this scene in real time on my computer, but the freestyle... the FREESTYLE! The thing that draws toon lines all over the starship. That damned thing made the render take forever!

There HAS to be a better alternative...

Also I had rendered this in the WebM format and the compression of that format seems to have made a whole bunch of artifacts. Hmmm... I'm very tempted to leave it render in a different format tonight when I go to bed and see if that changed anything.

Music, Orion by CO.AG Music: youtu.be/wrJ0itsyVR8

Toon shader by Paul O Caggegi: youtu.be/Q8PlDvt76VI

The .blend file of this scene can be acquired on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/43129321